


Rustless Fall (Onyx Shade Mix)

by Starcrossedsky



Series: Onyx Shade Mix [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Found Family, M/M, getting a handjob from a suit of armor, here meaning a fantasy universe that isn't the canon one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2018-12-15 21:24:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11814468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starcrossedsky/pseuds/Starcrossedsky
Summary: Necromancy is shady business, but you aren't going to complain too hard when it happens to you. Beats being dead.(Or: the one in which Fray's spirit accidentally re-animates his armor and things get just a little messily murdered as a result.)(Or: this one time, at fic camp, I actually wrote a happy ending.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> what up I'm back
> 
> Been working on an original fic universe a bit and sometimes the best way to beat things out is to throw your favorite fandom characters into it and see what sticks. So have some death knight!Fray.
> 
> FTR, Onyx Shade Mix is going to be my AU catchall, so don't expect further fics in it to follow this one. There _will_ be a second part, however.

You know what awaits - trial, a brief stay in the cells, execution. The arts you practice are forbidden, criminal, too close to necromancy for the comfort of the church and the city it lulls to gentle sleep. Nevermind that there's no trace of the undead and the Rotting Queen in them; it's all too common for shadow magics and necromancy to get conflated.

There's also the small matter of the girl, who you have _technically_ kidnapped, in the legal sense, no matter how much she wanted away, no matter how just the act.

You hope that you've bought Sid enough time to get her away, out of the city, out to start a new life somewhere.

You hope that he doesn't do something stupid.

\----

They're scared of you enough to try to drug you like a proper mage until the trial. You laugh in their faces, wild and mad against the restraints, until they silence you, and you feel the prick of a needle in your neck, anyway. It clamps down on anything you might have used to lash out, fizzles out most of your reasoning, but can't quite keep the dark curls of anger from leaking out of you.

If nothing else, at least you can be delightfully unsettling to them while they manhandle you into a cell.

\----

Judge, no jury, in the hours before dawn. They strip away your armor, throw it in a pile like so many scraps. One of the knights pauses at the reveal of your face - clean-shaven, messy haircut, almost generic behind the helm.

"What," you say, dripping with bitterness. "Expecting someone else?"

You're not the kind of madman they've been taught to expect, after all. No pock marks or sunken cheeks here. Just a normal-looking young man, perhaps a little dark of skin for the region, but generic enough that the eye skips over him in a crowd.

(That was always the intention, of course, because Sid is a foreign-colored _dragonborn_ with scales black as pitch cupping his face, and there's not much you can do to make him less noteworthy.)

The knight in question shivers and fails to meet your gaze, and then throws the obligatory bag over your head. Guillotine for you, then.

\----

They don't take the charm from your wrist, at least, the one that pulses with the magic of someone else's life beat. You can imagine Sid now, holed up in some barn or something somewhere, curled up around its mate with Rielle at his side, waiting for it to go dead. It's no wedding ring, but you two had never exactly been the sort to fit in with tradition, anyway.

In all likelihood, they simply can't feel it, with the way your will continues to lash out. Even under the continued effects of the drugs, they have to push you towards your execution with armored hands and the tips of spears. You curse them venomously, under your breath, with the scraps of magic you can call, with all but your last words.

"Sorry, Sid," you breathe, to quietly for anyone else to hear, and you thumb the charm where your hands are tied behind your back in the half a moment between hearing the blade fall and the abyss.

\----

_Someone touches your face, in that deep abyss. Runs thumbs over your cheeks, tuts gently at you. **Child, child,** she says. **Surely you aren't giving up yet?**_

_Her hands smell of mold and blood. The last thing you feel is her lips on your forehead._

\----

You wake up.

You really, really _shouldn't_ be waking up.

You are - _were_ \- in the pile they threw your armor into, to sort the useful from the dross later. It's a passable enough impression of humanity for getting on with, the underleathers that would cushion you from the metal plates and pinch of chainmail all perfectly in place, every strap secured to the right tightness for your living body - 

You body, which is very much not inside the armor. There's no feeling of cloth and leather on your skin, because you don't have any - just the sensation of _weight_ as you sit up from the floor. 

Fine. So you're a suit of armor now. First time you've heard of _that_ happening, but as being undead goes it beats the hell out of being a skeleton. Or a zombie. Or, really, anything that would have confined you to your own rotting corpse. Not to mention that your wits appear to be mostly intact.

You are far too pragmatic to panic over it. Instead you set about learning your new form before anyone comes looking to get rid of it. Vision: good. Better than good - you thought at first that it was the same, but now that you're getting up and about you realize there are no torches lit in the storage room where they've chucked you. Hearing: normal, maybe better, and testing it leads to the discovery that you can, with a certain exercise of will, make the chainmail parts of yourself as silent as cloth, good to know if you had any intention of sneaking out of here. 

Your sense of touch, though, is practically a loss - pressure and weight are all you get, and only in the most general sense. No feeling of texture and barely any of temperature - you call fire to one of your hands, ice to the other, and can barely tell the difference.

Even that little bit of magic ripples something _satisfying_ through your being, whatever parts of your soul remain. Except for your dark arts, you've had to work for every scrap and spell you could cast. Now, it flows unaided, needing only the barest flicker of your will and attention.

It shouldn't be surprising. Undead are creatures wholly of magic, the same as spirits or true dragons, but the sheer ease of it sends shivers through you. It feels _good_ , like physical effort, like you and Sid in the dark at night.

And then some poor idiot comes in, while you're standing there considering the new state of your existence and, oops, no need to have him raising the alarm, is there? He freezes, seeing you, and you barely flick your hand, letting the magic slash his throat open. You're realizing that you can feel the life in him, in contrast to yourself and the stone walls, and in the time it takes you to form the thought, that spark of life is gone.

And that, _that_ \- now that feels like the best kind of sex, some magnificent drug. _Justified violence_ , already a compelling element in your life, might have just shot up to your reason for _being_.

It ought to be disturbing, but it is not. You pick up your sword from where it was left on the ground with your armor, shrug, and set about avenging yourself.

It isn't long before laughter pours from beneath your helm, sounding just about like it should even without a throat, but the screaming starts first.

\----

You come back across your body almost by accident in the process of pursuing a couple of guards. The sight of yourself, headless, actually does get a bit disturbing, so you force yourself to disassociate from it. There's only one indication left that it was ever yours, anyway, with the armor and face both gone, head still in a bloody sack.

You strip the charm from the corpse's wrist, comforted by the swell and pulse of the magic beneath your fingers, and take a moment to strap it into the underside of a gauntlet where it belongs. You wonder what, if anything, Sid will feel on the other side, if the magic of what you are now will leak through where there once was life.

Well, you'll be able to ask him soon. With your better sense of magic, now, you can feel that tiny pull from the charm, leading you straight to his heart. Even if you have to go on foot - which seems likely, given the shrieking that you were met with chasing one spearman into the stables - you've been killing knights for a least two hours and have yet to feel anything like _tired_.

The undead don't have any need of sleep, after all.

You turn magical fire upon the body, because no mayhem is complete without a bonfire, and idly heat your sword to glowing in it, burning the next knight as much as you cut him down.

\----

The last handful of knights that dares to stand against you, trying to pretend they don't stink of fear, you don't even bring your sword against - you just rip the life from them, adding their small pools of magical power to your own. They fall over like abandoned dolls, swords falling from limp fingers. Somewhere down the line, your rage burned out (for the time being), and having to keep killing them just turned into a hassle.

You even left a couple alive, to report the horrors to their superiors, with deadly whispers of "The girl is ours, now," and "Don't follow," just to drive the point home. 

Part of you knows that you could take them in other ways - necromancy's secrets like an instinct in your mind. Breathe in the life force to make corpses, then breathe it back out to make them walk again.

You hold that breath, though. What good would having a bunch of rotting knights around do you anyway?

One of them does have a nicer chain shirt than yours, though. You spend a moment considering before shrugging, and loot the bastard for what he's worth. Your greaves needed replacing, too.

The idea of it strikes you as somewhat akin to having replaceable organs, and that is certainly a thought to end the day on. Perhaps you should have waited for Sid's help to change the shirt.

\----

The beat of the heart bound into your wrist pulls, and you follow, most of the blood of your evening's activities washing off as you tromp through the snow. You must have resurrected at the setting of the sun, because it is well into the night when you leave the site of your slaughter and leave the city behind. Nobody wants to be about in the winter chill at this hour.

You discover in a reflective water trough that your eyes glow in the darkness of your helm, simply unblinking rings of light with a famiscle of pupils in the center. There doesn't seem to be anything else, just a filling of shadows. Experimentally lifting your helmet off entirely renders you blind, though with an uncanny sense of your surroundings that you didn't notice sighted, keeping you from being completely helpless. Pulling off a gauntlet, instead, reveals only the faintest swirl of dark magic in the outline of a hand, which passes through the water without even making a ripple.

So that's that, then.

\----

Dawn breaks upon you jogging untiredly down the road with the small sounds of shifting mail your only companion. You'd been half afraid that the sun would somehow burn you, and it is a harsher glare than you were expecting - but only that. No bursting into flame, but no warming sunbeams, either.

(You're doing well, at putting off thinking about the things you've lost by virtue of becoming whatever you are now. Surely being alive, in whatever manner, is worth it.)

Not far, now. You can feel Sid more keenly, and you know he's just ahead.

(As long as you don't lose him.)

\----

It's an abandoned barn, far enough out that no one has tried to resettle it yet, freshly abandoned enough to not be full of weeds. You can feel them inside - two living people, one maybe half the size of the other. Tracks in the snow indicate that whatever horse Sid used to get this far out, he set loose; knowing him, probably stolen and released to go back to its master.

You're kind of grateful, considering the last thing you want is such a beast screaming at the sight of you.

You can't take a deep breath, so you sink a little into your magic instead, get the same calming effect by wrapping it snug around you. Like this, you can feel exactly how similar Sid is to you; living, but full of the same torrent of dark feelings.

(In the space of a day, you've learned that necromancy is all about _feelings_. The anger that sets corpse-raisers on their path is the same as yours, just turned into zombies they can use against their enemies. The man who turns himself in pursuit of immortality feels simply _fear_ , a fear of death greater than anyone else's, great enough to embrace its cousin. And grief and love to bring people back from the dead in manners slightly closer to their living selves - emotion, all of it.)

(You are not sure that you are anything _but_ emotion.)

You knock. You're sure they already know you're there, can feel Sid's pull of dark arts, Rielle half-hidden behind him.

Silence. You sigh at the door, and knock again, more loudly. Come on, you know the place isn't empty.

"Fuck off!" comes Sid's voice from the other side. "Or I'll cut off your head!"

"Someone already did," you call through the door. "Can I come in anyway?"

More silence. Rielle whispering, Sid grunting. You push the door open.

Almost as soon as you do, Sid's sword is at your throat - you're used to his quick, large movements, but you're not used to being able to match them. Somehow, though, your hand is resting against the blade, the edge cutting into your glove - maybe you should invest in true mail under your gauntlets, instead of just mail-backed leather. Catching blades isn't very impressive if they go through through the palm of your "hand."

"The hell kind of trick is this?" Sid demands, pupils slit and eyes narrowed. Anger and grief washes off of him. "Someone's idea of a sick joke?"

"Rotqueen's own, maybe," you say, thinking of that... _vision_ you had while you were dead. "And I think I might get why her bloody faithful call her Mother, but I swear it's me, Sid. I swear it."

"Stop," he says, and you realize, glancing up, that his eyes are watering. His voice is breaking, too, and all you want to do is take his face in your hands, smooth down his hair and... Well, you can't exactly kiss him anymore, but you ache to do _something_ to comfort him. "Fray's dead. I _felt_ him die."

"And did you bother paying attention to the charm after that, or did you throw it away in a fit of grief?" you demand, in a sudden surge of annoyance.

From the stricken look on his face, you should have known it was the latter. You wonder if you can reach out, find the charm's location for yourself...

You needn't bother. Rielle holds it in her hand, clutched in a fist as she slips past Sid's guard and wraps her arms around your waist. You start, not so much from the touch as from the feeling of her magic - practically the opposite to your own, now. Faetouched, you'd guessed when you and Sid found her, and now you're certain of it. Maybe a bit more than _touched_ , at that.

"It's him, Sid," she says, looking up at him while still glued solidly around your waist. She reaches up, offering him the charm back. "Feel it. It's the same."

The huge blade lowers away from you, gently, so that Sid can take the charm from Rielle's hand. He stares at it for a moment, then presses it to his bare cheek, as though not believing what he must be able to feel through the gloves. You can feel it yourself, now that you're paying attention, a pale echo of the power animating you.

Sid throws his sword aside with a clang and wraps his arms around you, one around your shoulders and the other alongside Rielle's arm at your waist, tucking her safely between you. You sigh and let your head fall forward, the brow of your helm resting against his breastplate. His chest underneath swells erratically with silent sobs.

You're home.

\----

"They're called death knights," Rielle says, when you've finished your explanation and settled into a pile of hay with them. Sid has complained three times about how cold your armor is, but he can't stop looking at you and won't release the arm still around your shoulders. Rielle leans against your other side, speaking quietly. "Knights who die fighting something but feel so strongly about it that their armor gets up and keeps fighting."

"Sounds like shit out of a legend," Sid says. You elbow him in the ribs, under the breastplate.

"You're _dragonborn_ ," you counter. "I thought _you_ were a legend."

He snorts, but doesn't argue the point. You turn back to Rielle. "Do you know anything else? It's more than I've got."

She shakes her head. "Just that they're really hard to kill. Maybe impossible. The only story I know where one died, he had killed the evil king who killed his family and so he just... gave up. Collapsed into a pile of armor and that was it."

It's more words than you can ever remember getting out of her at once, so you don't push any further. You're amazed that the church let such legends persist in any form; it's certainly a more positive spin on necromancy than anything else you've ever heard.

"I guess he got what he wanted," Sid says, and you nod. He presses closer to you. You can feel the magic and the life in him and it's better than sitting beside a fire. "Not planning on leaving us any time soon, are you?"

"Fat chance in hell," you say, reaching up to flick some of his bangs out of his face. "After all I went through to get back?"

You let the magic ooze out of you - harmless, to them, but full of all the sharp, protective feelings you have. You let it form a shell around the three of you, walling the world out. Rielle sighs, and closes her eyes, and slowly her breathing starts to settle into sleep.

Sid watches you, then folds a hand over your gauntlet. There is so much more to say, but for right now, it can wait.

"Good," he says, and love and magic seep out of him, too, mingling with your own, filling up the gaps inside your armor where a beating heart and warm hands would go. "Because if you leave again, I'll never forgive you."

"Sure you will," you quip, tilting your head back to look him in the eyes. "As long as I come back."

He snorts and kisses your helmet. "Shut up, Fray."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [wanders back in two months later] HEY SO... here's the rest of this, i guess. Rating increased to be on the safe side, because... mmm. Because.

With no pursuit in sight (good, you left an impression), there's no rush to leave the barn, relatively solid structure that it is. Sid doesn't seem to be looking forward to tromping through the snow, not that you can blame him.

Eventually you'll have to move on, because the magic fresh at your fingertips, itching to be used, can only create warmth, not food. But staying another night is fine; Rielle is exhausted, anyway, and neither of you wants to wake her. You tuck her in with a thin blanket and a thick layer of magic and pull Sid almost across the barn.

"Come on," you say, tugging him behind a stall wall when he hesitates. You want him, you _need_ him, need to feel something. There's a potential for a powerful despair to overtake you regarding your bodiless state, and acts of living are the only thing that can drive it off.

He lets you pull, but his eyes are wide and confused. "You can't mean to - Fray, you don't have a _body_."

"I have hands," you say, lifting the one that isn't clutching his to show him. Your gauntlet gives the fingers sharp points over the end of the leather gloves, but it's not as though you haven't worked around _Sid's_ claws before. "Haven't I made you come with just my hands before?"

He still looks uncertain, but there's promising patches of color in his cheeks. "But what about you?"

"What _about_ me?" you say. "This _is_ for me. I don't need you to return the favor, I just need to feel a little less like the walking dead and more like a normal bloody person."

 _I need you to still want me_ , you don't say with your words, but surely the magic around you carries it, raw and open, to him. You need him to feel alive, otherwise you might well end up destroying yourself.

The edge of despair teeters below you. Sid steps forward and wraps you in his arms, pulls you away from it. "Okay," he says, and almost more reassuring is the way he presses close, warm, the way he runs a hand down the side of your mail the way he might have run it down your bare ribs. "If you're sure."

You wish you could kiss him.

\----

You could have spent hours loving him with your fingers. You could spend eternity like that. When he's exhausted, you curl up tight against his side, as though seeking body warmth.

It's by no means perfect, but he presses a kiss to the mail where your throat would be, and it means a hell of a lot more than it did when you were flesh and blood. You sigh, drawn out and contented, like you're the one experiencing afterglow.

Sid plays with the fabric hanging from the back of your helm like it's your hair, and that is pretty solidly acceptable, too. Maybe not normal, but - something that could become a new normal, if you give it half a chance. "Can you feel it?" he asks.

"Not really," you admit. "I can tell you're moving it, but that's about all." His fingers pause. "Doesn't mean stop. I like it."

He snorts. "Fine, then. What _can_ you feel?"

"Pretty much what you'd expect in a full suit of armor," you say. "Contact and pressure, not much else."

"What about under the armor?"

It takes you a minute to realize that he means the empty, magic-filled space inside. That _is_ you, too, you suppose. You shrug. "Haven't tried."

"Can I?" he starts to ask, but you're already undoing the straps at one wrist, the one with his pulse bound into it. You pull back metal and leather until there's a gap in your forearm, dark and shadowed, that's big enough for him to actually reach a few fingers into. 

The way he takes your wrist in one hand and sticks a couple fingers of the other into it is almost delicate. A stray wisp of whatever you are curls around one, the flow disrupted.

"Feels weird," you say. "Not good or bad, just... Weird. Like a thing that's not food got in my mouth." That's the closest comparison you can come to that would make sense to someone living. His fingers feel foreign, not in a get-it-out way but in a way that makes you very _aware_ that he's pretty much poking whatever you have for a soul right now.

"Weird here too," he says. "Like putting my hands in warm soup, except with magic instead of soup."

"I basically _am_ magic now," you feel compelled to point out. "Magic, armor, and feelings."

"Mmm." Sid still hasn't taken his fingers out, is looking at your "face" in the dark. "Can I try something?"

"Why not?" you say. You can't imagine that he'd hurt you, intentionally or otherwise. You're not even sure if he _can_. "We're exploring my freakshow of an existence, do whatever."

He does. Fingers still in your soul, he sends a little pulse of magical feeling out from them, a tiny ripple through you.

It's like nothing else you've ever experienced, but the way it puts sparks all the way through you maps straight to sex, mind-blowing like the _other_ first time he put fingers in you. Your reflex reaction is to gasp for breath, but you don't breathe anymore, so instead you shudder, loud and rattling, feeling like every plate of your armor must have just bashed together.

"Holy shit," you say, sounding breathless anyway. "Do that again."

"That good, huh?" he teases, smirking.

"Do it _again_ ," you demand, squirming up to him as though being closer means anything. "Don't make me beg."

He does, and then a third time immediately after, and it completely unmakes you. You are nothing more than a quivering mass of metal and leather slumped over the side of his chest, half-afraid you're going to collapse and come apart. He's touching your _soul_ , with love and desire and magic, and if you didn't belong to him already you certainly would now.

"Fuck," you hiss. "Don't you ever dare worry about reciprocating again, every one of those was like an orgasm."

"You're kidding," he says, and you pulse back _into_ his fingers, let your magic do the talking. He shivers under you. "Fine, maybe you aren't. It's not quite that good for me, but I guess if you can't feel anything else..."

"I don't need to," you say, almost entirely meaning it. "That was glorious. Exhausting in a way I don't understand, but glorious."

You don't think you could handle another. You also don't want him to ever stop. It's almost terrible when he releases you, carefully closing the gap in the armor himself. The thought that keeps you above water is the fact that you can certainly do that again, many, many times.

(When you were human, the difference in your lifespans seemed terrifying, knowing that Sid has a couple of youthful centuries in him and age would make you useless in less than one. Now you only have to worry about rust.)

His pulse is still in your wrist where it belongs. You lay your head on his chest contentedly, and feel him drift off beneath you. You don't need to sleep, but you do zone out, listening to his breathing, a touch of magic keeping the metal of your armor from becoming too much a block of ice.

\----

You lose track of time, like that, until you hear Rielle shifting and starting to wake. It's still not sleep, but it's much like how the boring parts of life disappeared from your living memory a week or a month later. Now, apparently, you only have hours - already most of your walk out here from the city is blurred out, as though it wasn't yesterday.

It's still dark outside - nearly midnight, if you had to guess, with a high, bright moon half-hidden behind clouds. The kind of night your mother always said not to go out in, when she was still alive, lest the fae snatch you up - 

There's someone else in the barn. Some glowing, magical thing, harsh like cold wind between your teeth, standing over Rielle - 

You snatch up the nearest weapon, which is actually Sid's and used to be too large for you to wield, and tap the tip on the Huntsman's shoulder. "And just what do you think _you're_ doing?"

The fae stops, one hand still threaded through the sleeping girl's loose hair, and turns to you, not even bothering to brush off the blade. His face is pale, narrow, and pointed, and looks more like Rielle's than her mother's ever did.

 _Hells, heavens, and the rest._ You'd heard that Huntsmen sometimes took up with human women, but - 

Then again, why are you surprised anymore when something out of a fairy tale pops up in your life? You firmly resolve to not be surprised by the appearance of anything out of legend ever again, because getting worked up over it seems rather stupid at this point.

"I came for my daughter," he says, as though it wasn't blindingly obvious. His voice is chill, empty of emotion. You tighten your hand around the hilt of Sid's blade, nudge it against his chin, and he looks down at it as though seeing it for the first time. "...Do you intend to stop me, deathborn?"

You grunt. "You've got a lot of balls calling her your daughter, after leaving her with that bitch."

He shrugs. "The Hunt is no place for an infant. She's old enough to ride, now, and she is **unwanted**." The word wavers in the air, some magic in it - a fae contract satisfied, the terms of the deal set. It's a foreign magic that would give you goosebumps if you had any skin. "We do not take those who are happy with their human families."

"How magnanimous of you," you say, voice dripping with sarcasm. And it would be so easy, to let him take her - one less problem for you and Sid to deal with. Neither of you is really equipped to take care of a child, especially a half-fae girl, but - 

The idea appalls you. Perhaps because you died for her, perhaps because you were an _unwanted_ child once yourself, a street orphan with no better prospects and certainly no mysterious fae father to come whisk you away, but you can't give her up so easily.

"Just because her mother doesn't want her doesn't mean that _no one_ does."

Something that might be confusion flashes across the Huntsman's pointed face. " _You_ want her?" he says, voice no longer toneless but tinged with incredulity. "Surely not, knight. She is the Starfather's child, even half-human - she will never belong to your queen, unlike some." His eyes drift over to where Sid lies, still asleep - under the blanket of fae enchantment, surely, otherwise your voice would have awoken him by now.

You snort. "Like I give a damn what the Rotqueen thinks. I came back for Rielle, not her."

"She is not of your magic," he says, and you realize that he's trying to convince you - trying to use logic, on a thing that thinks with its feelings. It would almost be laughable, if you felt inclined to laugh right now. "She may still seek us out someday, choose to follow the call of her blood. Even if she does not, she will never return your - " He pauses, gesturing, seemingly at a loss. " - _intensity_ , the way a human child would."

Intensity is one word for it, you suppose. Your magic is still poised, running along the blade, almost hissing where it brushes against the fae's, like cold water thrown on a hot pan or a pissed off snake. Actually, you feel rather like a pissed off snake on the whole, for all that snakes aren't exactly known for defending their children. "I still want her."

The fae looks at you without understanding, and then, unbearably slowly, nods. "I should have known better than to attempt _rational_ discussion with one of the undead," he mutters, and that _does_ make you start laughing, because you are perfectly rational - 

At least, perfectly capable of being rational. You just don't choose to exercise the ability.

Politely, the Huntsman waits for you to stop laughing. "You agree to take her, then? As though by blood?" And there is magic, shuddering, hanging in the words, a verbal contract enforced by fae magic. And you know that if you say no, she will be gone, and that if you should ever _not_ want her, she will be gone.

Everyone always talks about fairy contracts being devil's deals you shouldn't take, but you swing the sword down and offer him your hand to shake on it. The magic is still creepy-crawly against your armor, especially where it wraps around your wrist, ready to seal. You would never not agree, not in your wildest dreams.

The Huntsman says, "So be it," and puts his hand in yours. You can feel where the metal of your gauntlet is magically repellant to him, the steel not pure enough iron to burn him but still turning the skin red. The magic twists like a chain around your connected hands, invisible to the eye but painfully real. "Then she is yours, as long as you want her."

The magic sinks in, and he releases your hand. It's then that the pain starts, and you remember - _right_ , fae magic and undead magic really _shouldn't_ be mixed.

Sid's sword clattering to the ground beside you, you crumple. The pain starts in your hand, but rapidly transfers to your lower abdomen, twisting and churning as though it were a vine growing from your genitals. Makes good enough sense, considering that it's magic that has just made you a parent, but oh, gods, does it burn. 

And you don't have any choice but to suffer through it, either, because you don't have a _brain_ anymore to say no and deliver you into safe unconsciousness. You stay torturously aware through the whole damn thing, shaking, hands pressed into your stomach as though _that_ will help. Eventually, the growth of the contract stops, when the longest tendril of the magic is grown up around where your heart would be, and it begins to fade into an ache as your own magic makes room for it, wraps around it, absorbs the foreign thing into you.

You have no idea how long it takes. When you can focus to see again, the clouds have hidden the moon completely, and the Huntsman is gone.

Shaking, jingling, you pull yourself to your feet, and go over to Rielle. She sleeps on, unaware of what transpired, still buried tight in her blankets with a bit of hay in her hair.

She's yours, now, this tiny, pale thing. You have a _daughter_. Hells, another thing you never planned on. At this rate, you'll have to drag Sid up to somebody's altar for an actual wedding.

(Assuming, of course, that there are any priests willing to marry a death knight to a dragonborn dark arts practitioner, nevermind you both being men. Outside of the Fell Mother's cults, you doubt there are any, and you don't want to be any more beholden to her than you already are.)

You pick a yellow stalk out of Rielle's bangs and tuck the blankets in tighter around her. The sleep spell the Huntsman wove has worn off, leaving only natural sleep in its place. She sighs at her dreams, wearing a content little smile, and that - 

You can only hope that it becomes a meaningless, every day thing, but you won't be forgetting it any time soon.

\----

Of course, in the morning, you have to explain to Sid what you've done. You half-expect him to be angry - and he'd have every right to be, considering. You didn't exactly consult him in your decision. 

But instead he throws his arms around your shoulders and squeezes, uncomfortably collapsing your plate down on your magical core, still a bit sore from the contract. "I don't know what I would have done," he says, "if I'd woken up and she was just... Gone."

 _Especially if you hadn't come back_ , hangs off the end of his words, unsaid. You hug him back, until your mail has left impressions in the skin of his chest, and then you throw his shirt into his face to encourage him to get dressed.

"Right, then," you say. "I'll start breakfast, and then we'll get on the road. I don't know where we can go that will take all three of us, but we'll find somewhere."

Together. With your _family_.

Hell. Even if the other option _wasn't_ being dead, you don't think you'd have any complaints.

**Author's Note:**

> also hey if you want to hit me up on discord [here's a fray/sid server for you](https://discord.gg/JTGjBrG)


End file.
